, and the very clothes uttering voices
to corroborate the story in the face. Not less surprising is the
change when we leave off to speak of generalities--the bad, the good,
the miser, and all the characters of Theophrastus[8]--and call up
other men, by anecdote or instance, in their very trick and feature;
or trading on a common knowledge, toss each other famous names, still
glowing with the hues of life. Communication is no longer by words,
but by the instancing of whole biographies, epics, systems of
philosophy, and epochs of history, in bulk. That which is understood
excels that which is spoken in quantity and quality alike; ideas thus
figured and personified, change hands, as we may say, like coin; and
the speakers imply without effort the most obscure and intricate
thoughts. Strangers who have a large common ground of reading will,
for this reason, come the sooner to the grapple of genuine converse.
If they know Othello and Napoleon, Consuelo and Clarissa Harlowe,
Vautrin and Steenie Steenson,[9] they can leave generalities and begin
at once to speak by figures.

Conduct and art are the two subjects that arise most frequently and
that embrace the widest range of facts. A few pleasures bear
discussion for their own sake, but only those which are most social or
most radically human; and even these can only be discussed among their
devotees. A technicality is always welcome to the expert, whether in
athletics, art or law; I have heard the best kind of talk on
technicalities from such rare and happy persons as both know and love
their business. No human being[10] ever spoke of scenery for above two
minutes at a time, which makes me suspect we hear too much of it in
literature. The weather is regarded as the very nadir and scoff of
conversational topics. And yet the weather, the dramatic element in
scenery, is far more tractable in language, and far more human both in
import and suggestion than the stable features of the landscape.
Sailors and shepherds, and the people generally of coast and mountain,
talk well of it; and it is often excitingly presented in literature.
But the tendency of all living talk draws it back and back into the
common focus of humanity. Talk is a creature of the street and
market-place, feeding on gossip; and its last resort is still in a
discussion on morals. That is the heroic form of gossip; heroic in
virtue of its high pretensions; but still gossip, because it turns on
personalities. You c